Rest Day Reflections
On Mind and Body
Yesterday was definitely a case of the mind commanding and the body obeying.
My plan was to ride over 80 miles from Cody to Ainsworth through central Nebraska. It would be the last effort of the riding week, with the intent to find a shady spot to camp in Ainsworth and take a day off. But, in the morning, my body felt tired from the week’s effort of hard riding (not to mention the cumulative effort of the last four weeks); as I set out it would be an understatement to say that the body did not rise to the occasion of the demands of having to ride the up-and-down stretch heading east from Cody. The wind was of no help as it varied from a strong cross-wind to straight out “in your face,” New York City style. To complicate matters (for the body, that is), I did not eat enough before leaving. In the back of my head I thought that I would stop in one of the several small towns that lie between Cody and Valentine and get a quick bite and a cup of coffee. Unfortunately, the places on the map were small farming villages with no services. I had to settle for three Clif Bars for nourishment; they do the trick in a pinch but are not the same as a roadside rocket fuel meal loaded with carbs and protein.
As the wind and heat tormented me, I actually took out my ear buds and listened to music as I rode on a mostly empty highway US 20. The music was a successful pain mitigation strategy. Still, I arrived in Valentine depleted and unsure if I would have the strength to ride the additional 46 miles to Ainsworth.
But I was determined to get to Ainsworth, mostly for the psychological sense of accomplishment because riding those miles would have meant that I have completed over half the mileage for this trek before a well-deserved rest day. I met up with Joanie at the laundromat and ate a healthy portion of rice and lentils leftovers, a hard-boiled egg sandwich, and topped it off with soft ice cream from a Main Street ice cream shop. I also took some time to do some repairs on Joanie’s bike, so I only saddled up to leave Valentine for Ainsworth after 3 pm. By then, the temperature was in the mid-90s. Only mad dogs and Englishmen, right? Change that to “Mad Doug” and Englishmen.
Valentine is the western terminus of the Cowboy Trail, a 190-mile trail through northern Nebraska. I had been aiming to ride this trail since the planning stages of this trek as it would provide a respite from the traffic and the incessant whine of pickup truck tires and deafening roars of road hogs on their way to or from the biker gathering in Sturgis, South Dakota. But I had also heard recently from locals that the Cowboy Trail’s loose gravel surface was a little sloppy. I was fully prepared to abandon the trail in favor of US 20 if I found that riding the trail was more trouble than it was worth. So when I picked up the trail from Valentine and rode downhill towards the Niobrara River, I was pleased that the trail was in good condition. But as the land rose on the eastern slopes rising from the river, the trail became sloppy, and I was working hard to maintain progress. “OK,” I thought, “this is the uphill. Let’s see how I feel when the trail levels off.”
I found the reports I had heard about the trail’s surface to be inaccurate; it was not sloppy because of loose gravel but instead it had more of a sandy consistency, with deeper pools that seemed to grab the rear tire, requiring spurts of extra effort to move forward. And since the former railway line was cut through the earth to keep the grades at a minimal, there was no wind as I moved through the soft hills, and therefore it was like riding in a furnace. After seven miles I cut my losses, and cut back to US 20, where the going was smoother and the wind, though not pushing me from behind, at least provided relief from the heat.
Relief from the heat notwithstanding, I still had to get to Ainsworth. And this is where the mind commanded the body to work, and essentially shut down the complaints. It was hot (very). I was still riding in the Sandhills, and so while the elevation dropped as I pushed forward, the road still had the occasional half-mile/mile climbs, some at grades of over 5%. Yet there was nothing left to do but grind it out, mile after slow mile. On more than one occasion, I would finish a climb, panting and weak, only to see the discouraging site of yet another climb cut through a hill in the distance. I promised myself a break every 11.5 miles or so, but when the time came, with the sun so high and the absence of trees so predominant, there was not a shady spot where I could stop. My body had so wanted to stop (“you promised me a break,” I could hear it scream) but my mind knew that sitting in the searing sun was no true break, and I had to push a few miles more until I found a suitable place to stop (on the side of the road where the shade of a nearby tree provided maybe a few square feet of shade).
After the break, I just pushed ahead. There’s no way to sugar coat or romanticize the experience; on days such as these, existence boils down to one pedal stroke after another. The miles slide by slowly. No tailwind to rescue the day and make you feel omnipotent. Just hard work.
The minutes turn in to hours. The sun slowly moved towards the horizon but had lost none of its potency. Pickup truck drivers in cowboy hats coming the opposite way give polite waves. Trucks loaded with hay moved over to the shoulder and gave me a wide berth. Determination. Persistence. Up and down. Every so often I would stand on the pedals and coast to give my sore butt a break. On and on. We are making it to Ainsworth. Go. Go. Go! Even though every muscle fiber was begging to stop, I kept on pushing, moving forward.
Early in the evening I struggled up the incline towards the village of Johnstown after crossing a creek and I sensed the landscape had changed. The land near the road was no longer the light brown, soft rounded hills of the Sandhills but flat with neat green fields of soybeans and corn or empty fields dotted with rolls of recently harvested hay. I sensed I had moved from cattle country, with its wide open ranges, to a crop-centered farming area. Sure enough, the last 12 miles were pancake flat (finally!), and the air no longer had the dusty smell of the Sandhills, tinged with the background odor of manure, but rather had the rich smell of growth. I finally made it to Ainsworth after 7:30 p.m., the low sun creating long shadows in the streets and the fields, and a strong wind blowing that vacated the heat.
On Tailwinds
For me, a tailwind is like a drug. It acts as a stimulant, much like coffee, and creates a sense of power, however fleeting. A tailwind turns a slow moving day in the saddle into a speed festival. Much like Peter Parker after getting bit by the radioactive spider, I become giddy and thrilled with my ability to go so superhumanly freaking fast with minimal effort. And like the tricks a drug plays on the mind, I somehow believe this ability is my birthright, that it should be like this all the time. I begin to entertain thoughts of grandeur, because when you are zooming down the road at 25 mph, mysteriously, your muscles no longer ache, and you think surely that you will soon hit the coast and ride directly to Europe without stopping. Yes, with tailwinds, all things are possible.
Tailwinds erase the inherent suffering of bicycle treks and make a bad day good. You smile and wave at everyone. You scream down the hillsides and imagine the thoughts of onlookers, who surely must be thinking, “My God! He is going so fast!!”
In truth, however, winds are fickle, and as I’ve posted earlier, the wind can be your best friend and then, on a dime, literally turn on you and blow right in your face, taunting, “How do you like me now, eh?!?” And those onlookers? Well, what they’re actually thinking is more along the lines of, “Look at that crazy SOB cyclist riding down highway 20.”
On Suffering
As I wrote above, a cross country trek is, to some extent, a suffer-fest. But the suffering I am currently enduring is voluntary (another way to describe it would be “self-inflicted”). However, if you reflect on suffering even for a fleeting moment, it’s fairly obvious that suffering is a defining feature of the human experience. Leaving illness and poverty out of the equation for the time being, to be human is to suffer.
Suffering is a central concept in the Buddhist tradition. It is the first of the Four Noble Truths (Dukkha), and is commonly explained according to three different categories:
The obvious physical and mental suffering associated with birth, growing old, illness, and dying.
The anxiety or stress of trying to hold onto things that are constantly changing.
A basic “unsatisfactoriness” pervading all forms of existence, because all forms of life are changing and impermanent.
I would like to add a fourth category of Dukkha, which is the physical and mental suffering associated with voluntarily taking on an extraordinary physical challenge. And by no means am I trying to be a competitive sufferer. My bike trip is actually on the “light” end of the challenge spectrum; for the other extreme, consider Colin O’Brady and Louis Rudd, who separately trekked for two months (alone) across Antarctica for almost 1,000 miles, becoming the first people to traverse the continent from coast to coast solo, unsupported and unaided by wind. O’Brady and Rudd were engaged in a race to see who could complete the trek first. A race.
I see the outer manifestation of our consumer-oriented society as false attempt to, at best, ameliorate suffering; or, at worse, deny suffering completely. Good advertising makes us believe that we can be happy if we purchase this product or do this fun thing. While not explicitly stated, the message behind good advertising is that your life will be improved and your suffering will be mitigated if you buy our product.
With regards to how society approaches suffering, the polar opposite of good advertising is good art. What makes for good art (especially the narrative forms such as fiction, poetry, theater, songwriting, and film) is how the artist creatively provides a means for us to resonate with the limitations and pain that is the human experience. If we choose to read and engage, that is. For it is much easier to click the mouse (Cool, they even have free shipping) and get immediate, if temporary, satisfaction.
This trek is not easy. In the grand scheme of things, I was aware that I would suffer, but I did not and could not know how it would affect me. I’m not just talking about the pain of being on the bike for six to eight hours a day but the quirky physical side effects of a long-term endurance effort.
And then I stop and think about Hindy and all cancer survivors. And I shut up.